Table of contents
This information is correct as of June 2023. Growth Method has made every attempt to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information provided.
In this article we provide a short comparison of Hotjar and Microsoft Clarity. Clarity and Hotjar are the two most widely used behavior analysis tools for marketers and provide functionality such as session recordings and heatmaps. If you’re weighing up your broader analytics stack alongside a behavioural tool like these, see our comparison of PostHog vs Google Analytics.
According to the Microsoft Clarity website:
Clarity is a free, easy-to-use tool that captures how real people actually use your site. Setup is easy and you’ll start getting data in minutes. Clarity is a free service—forever. You will never run into traffic limits or be forced to upgrade to a paid version.
According to the Hotjar website:
We help you understand how users behave on your site, what they need, and how they feel, fast. Hotjar is the leading solution for product teams who want to go beyond traditional web and product analytics so they can empathize with and understand their users—to connect the dots between what’s happening and why it happens, so they can improve the user experience (UX) and create customer delight.
Clarity vs Hotjar Comparison
Heatmaps: Both Clarity and Hotjar offer heatmaps that visually represent user activity on a webpage, showing where users have clicked, moved their mouse, or scrolled. The heatmaps generated by these tools might have slight differences in visualization but essentially serve the same purpose.
Session Recordings: Both tools provide session recordings, allowing you to watch real user sessions on your website. This feature helps you understand how users are interacting with your site, including potential usability issues they may encounter.
Pricing: The most significant difference between the two offerings is that Microsoft Clarity is free to use without any restrictions on the number of websites or the number of user sessions recorded, whereas Hotjar offers both free and paid plans, with more advanced features and higher limits only available in paid plans.
| Feature | Microsoft Clarity | Hotjar |
|---|---|---|
| User session recordings | Yes | Yes |
| Click heatmap | Yes | Yes |
| Tap heatmap | Yes | Yes |
| Scroll depth heatmap | Yes | Yes |
| Area heatmap | Yes | Yes |
| Surveys | No | Yes |
| Incoming feedback | No | Yes |
| Limits | No limits | Various limits, especially on the free plan |
| Integrations | GA, GTM, Optimizely, HubSpot, WordPress, and more | GTM, WordPress, GA, Bing Webmaster, and Microsoft Ads |
| Pricing | Completely free, no limits | Free and paid plans |
Clarity vs Hotjar for WordPress
At the time of writing, the Microsoft Clarity plugin has 10,000+ active installations, with the plugin last updated 3 months ago. For more information see https://wordpress.org/plugins/microsoft-clarity/.
Microsoft Clarity WordPress Plugin
Hotjar, at the time of writing, has over 100,000 active installations, indicating a considerably larger (9X) install base for the plugin. For more information see https://wordpress.org/plugins/hotjar/.
Hotjar WordPress Plugin
Tips for use
Both Microsoft Clarity and Hotjar provide a wealth of insights into user behavior which can be leveraged to improve your websites, enhance the user experience, and ultimately increase conversions.
Here are a few simple suggestions:
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Leverage user recordings to see where someone spends more time than others, and adjust your messaging or where it sits on your page to increase conversion.
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Identify potential issues with your website’s design or functionality that could be hindering conversions.
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Use scroll-depth maps to see how far someone scrolls before leaving a page.
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If you find a specific piece of content on a page that people spend significant time looking at, it may be worth moving it higher in the page.
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Watch how users interact with your website in real-time in order to identify where users are getting stuck.
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Pair these behavioural insights with your product analytics platform — see our PostHog integration for how Growth Method brings session and event data into your campaign reporting.
Reviews
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Capterra Hotjar https://www.capterra.co.uk/software/163516/hotjar vs Microsoft Clarity https://www.capterra.co.uk/software/1018691/microsoft-clarity
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G2 Hotjar https://www.g2.com/products/hotjar/reviews vs Clarity https://www.g2.com/products/microsoft-microsoft-clarity/reviews
Articles
Final thoughts
While both tools have their strengths and unique offerings, the best way to decide which one is right for your needs is to try them both. Fortunately, getting them up and running takes only a few minutes, allowing you to quickly see firsthand how they can help enhance your website’s user experience and boost your conversion rates.
About Growth Method
Watching a heatmap or a session recording tells you what happened on a page — it doesn’t tell you what to do about it, or whether your fix actually worked. That’s the gap Growth Method is built to close, as the agentic marketing platform for B2B teams: connect behavioural tools like Hotjar, Microsoft Clarity or PostHog, and Growth Method turns what you see in a recording into a hypothesis, a test plan, and a scored campaign, then closes the loop with data-driven attribution once it’s live. Instead of watching sessions in isolation, your team (and your agents) get a shared, first-party record of what you tried, what moved, and why.
Book a call with Stuart to see how it fits your stack, or apply for early access today.
Frequently asked questions
Is Hotjar better than Microsoft Clarity?
Neither tool is unconditionally better — it depends on budget and feature needs. Microsoft Clarity is free with no session or traffic limits, making it a strong default for teams that just need heatmaps and recordings. Hotjar adds surveys and incoming feedback tools on paid plans, which suits teams that want on-page voice-of-customer alongside behavioural data.
What is the difference between Hotjar and Microsoft Clarity?
The core session recording and heatmap functionality is broadly the same. The main differences are pricing (Clarity is free without limits, Hotjar has free and paid tiers with usage limits) and feature breadth (Hotjar includes surveys and feedback widgets that Clarity does not).
Is Microsoft Clarity really free forever?
Yes. Microsoft Clarity is a free service with no traffic limits or forced upgrade path, unlike Hotjar’s tiered plans which cap free usage.
How does Hotjar vs Clarity compare to tools like Mouseflow?
Mouseflow offers similar heatmap and recording functionality to both tools, generally as a paid-only product. Compared with Clarity’s free unlimited tier, Mouseflow and Hotjar’s paid plans compete more on advanced segmentation, funnels and feedback features rather than on core recording features.